The College Fix

MADISON, Wis. – “Health is not just about health,” Kelsey Foster, a university librarian, said at the Women’s and Gender Studies Consortium conference on April 10 at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

“We reject the idea that a body type can be a disease,” she said. “It’s possible to be fat and healthy, fat and unhealthy, thin and healthy, thin and unhealthy.”

The university prohibited The College Fix and other media from taking any photos as well as recording audio and video. About 25 people attended the event. Recording is prohibited throughout the entire three-day panel held at the publicly-funded university. The conference is titled “Embodying Feminism: Calling In, Calling Out, Calling to Action.”

Foster (pictured) gave a presentation titled “Fat Girl Glossary.” She has been “an active member of online fat positive communities for over a decade,” according to her talk description.

She spoke on a panel titled “Embodying and Embracing Fatness as Liberation” that consisted of three 20-minute presentations and a Q&A session.

Foster began her talk with a slide that contained a Tumblr post that read: “Just a reminder that I’m FAT and HAPPY and if you don’t like that then that is entirely your problem :)) – double chin smile just 4 u.”

Her talk focused on the various terms used in online fat-culture communities.

“We have words we use sometimes to combat the tyranny of the BMI,” she said, referring to Body Mass Index.

Throughout her talk, Foster defined various terms such as “Deathfatty” and “Infinifat” which both refer to morbid obesity.

Other terms mentioned in her talk included “fat positivity,” which she defined as the belief that fatness is a good thing and fat people are good people; “body positivity,” meaning all bodies are good bodies; “Body Neutrality,” the idea that the body is neither good nor bad- it just is; and “fat liberation,” which she said imagines a future free from oppression based on body size and the tyranny of “healthism.”

She said diet culture must be pushed back against to achieve fat liberation.

She posed questions such as, “Why are airplane seats so small?” and “Why are folding chairs so small?”

In response to a theoretical objection about health, she responded, “Here’s the thing, there is no weight limit on respect as a human being,” she responded.

“If someone’s unhealthy, that’s none of my business,” Foster said.

The other speakers on the panel addressed topics including “Fat Life Writing” and “A Case Study of the ‘Beauty’ Subreddit.”

In the 2025 Conference Welcome Letter, Co-Chairs Stephanie Rytilahti and Karla Strand wrote: “We developed this theme in the summer of 2024 with the intent of honoring the ongoing activism and legacy of reproductive justice activist Loretta Ross while also concretizing and being explicit about what it means to embody feminist ideals.”

Neither responded to an April 9 email requesting further comment on the panel. However, Rytilahti did respond to an April 10 request to record the event.

This conference has been hosted annually for 49 years. This year, it includes speeches and breakout sessions on a range of feminist topics, including one on “Anti-oppressive pedagogical practice”, a keynote on “Criminalizing the Crisis: Bodies ‘Out of Place’ and Neoliberal (Dis)Order”, and a speech titled “Capitalism, Caste, and Creativity: Pushing Back on Spaces and Systems of Oppression.”

Fourteen co-sponsors of the event are listed on the conference website, including the UW-Madison Gender and Sexuality Campus Center and the UW-Madison department of gender and women’s studies.

The website also states that the event is being held “under the auspices of the UNESCO Chair on Gender, Wellbeing and a Culture of Peace as part of a global United Nations Platform on education, science, and culture.”

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IMAGE CAPTION AND CREDIT: University of Wisconsin librarian Kelsey Foster is pictured; University of Wisconsin

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